”Knit Your Sleep from the Night’s Black Yarn” by Lisa Grove
You snore a language I don’t understand. Flat on your back, you make chit-chat with chainsaw fairies. Is this your native tongue? Is this the stutter of your soul to shrunken ears above? I turn –– one, two, three AM. A train enters my ear tunnels, whistling Morse code, rattling the sheets. I will chart the longs and shorts over your unibrow, I will elbow under eyelids, I will circle irises to know the patterns of your soft palate and navigate the irregular verbs of your vernacular, all to learn what you are saying, what you are saying, what you are saying is I was asleep, dreaming of your silence.
| Lisa Grove’s work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry International, A cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.. |